Michael Jackson was someone who can make anything or anyone special and important with his association. The same thing happened with PepsiCo, the famous snacks, food, and beverage corporation when their $5 million deal was accepted by Michael & his brothers (Jacksons) after rejecting the $1 million deal offered by Coca Cola top soft-drink brand.
In 1983, after Thriller success, Pepsi’s wise decision of approaching Michael Jackson, took the brand to the peaks of success as the brand’s marketers were very much aware that Michael Jackson has won the hearts of numerous people in the United States with his angelic smile, down-to-earth attitude, and extraordinary talent and that would be the great time for Pepsi to make the brand look ‘younger’ by showing that ‘s the choice of a generation’.
The Pepsi commercial was shot on the streets wherein the beginning a few kids are seen drinking Pepsi, grooving, and dancing to the song. Here, we’d like to tell you that the song of Pepsi commercial was made after taking inspiration from “Billie Jean”, the recent super hit at that time. The tone of both the songs were the same while the beats were different. The main kid of the group wearing a red jacket, blue shirt, and black jeans along with the famous black shoes of Jackson with white socks, was seen quite inspired by the look of Jackson in the music video of “Beat It”, another hit single of the Thriller Album. The kid was seen drinking Pepsi and he started moonwalking on the street, he was hit by someone on the back and he was surprised to see Michael Jackson, the King of Pop right behind his back smiling at him and singing the song. Later, the Jacksons and the kids were seen dancing to the song with the same dance steps. The commercial ended with the tagline “Pepsi – the choice of a new generation”.
It came out as one of the biggest celebrity endorsement deals when the Jackson’ s deal resulted in an immense increase in the market share of Pepsi with sales of $7.7 billion in the year 1984 with a drop in Coca Cola’s market share. Pepsi was overwhelmed with this outstanding result and signed another deal of $10 million for global target, endorsing Bad 1987-1988.
Pepsi later approached many artists including singers, actors, athletes, and other famous people in their commercials but the world witnessed that the charm and magical influence of Michael and his brothers is still unbeatable and the profits they brought to Pepsi are still unbelievable.
But things didn’t go that well as supposed to be. In 27th January 1984, when the Jacksons were performing live in front of thousands of the audience at the Shrine Auditorium, a large event venue in Los Angeles, Michael was supposed to come up to the stage in the last once all the brothers were assembled on the stage but unfortunately during the sixth take, Jackson was on the way to the stage when his hair caught fire as the pyrotechnics went off a bit too early. Jackson’s scalp had second-degree burns due to that fire and also lost some hair. The brave Jackson was quite calm and poised even after this sudden incident while the team and his brothers were extremely shocked and chaotic at the time. It has been said that after the incident, Michael’s hair was never like before and apparently he used to wear wigs. The pain of burns is not that easily unstoppable and so was for Michael and therefore he used to take pills to reduce the pain.